Random posts, ramblings and exercises in writing, by a translator

I know it says update in the title, but there really isn’t one. Over the past six weeks I’ve received several more offers from Discover and American Express, all of which I threw away. Interestingly, Amex is now offering me the Gold card–the Gold card that a few years ago was not that easy to get unless you spent significant amounts of money every month! Are they so desperate that they offer these to just about anyone? Or is the whole Gold card thing just a ploy; essentially the same card as the regular green card, only with a higher annual fee (“free in the first year”)?

I’m still hoping for Amazon to increase the gift card amount on their rewards card, but thus far it’s still $30. I guess the next step could be just any old store card, but I really like books more than anything (and Barnes & Noble only offer a $25 gift card with their branded Mastercard).

Finally, since I applied for my Capital One Mastercard in May of last year and since they’ve already raised my credit limit once, I expect I get another raise in May of this year. We’ll see!

PS I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but it’s interesting to me that all of the branded credit cards I have come across are Mastercard, never Visa. I remember a time when you almost couldn’t get a Mastercard (in France and Luxembourg, at least); it was Visa all the way. I guess they’ve been making bad business decisions… Looking at their stock evaluations (Visa share price, Mastercard share price), Mastercard is worth more than three times than Visa! But: both companies have more or less doubled their share price since 2011.